In conventional, permanently installed power and mechanical equipment, such as computer and communication systems, located inside of buildings, a failure of either the driving or the driven load components results in the use of highly skilled workers and equipment to remove the defective electrical or mechanical components and replace them with new working components. Valuable time is lost and great expenses are thereby incurred.
Critical equipment located inside of ordinary buildings can be completely destroyed when a disaster occurs. Systems and equipment installed in permanent structures also do not lend themselves well to repairs and modification. Additionally, the labor, materials and equipment necessary to remove or to increase the size of the system are very expensive.
As an example, where computer and communication systems are mounted within a building structure and then they are destroyed, as by fire from an adjacent warehouse, great cost and problems are involved in relocating to a temporary off-site computer room until a new permanent structure can be built. The design of many large computer and communication systems is such that if a disaster were to strike, they would be completely or substantially destroyed.
Large sums of money are often spent building temporary sites after the disaster has already occurred. Rebuilding the damaged facility and replacing the equipment is also very expensive. Business can be thereby disrupted, customers lost and an irrevocable financial strain suffered. The major causes of destruction of facilities housing critical systems are fire, storms, floods, earthquakes and sabotage.
Fires which have destroyed computer rooms often do not start within the room themselves but rather travel to the room causing the roofs and walls of the room to collapse. Halon and sprinklers inside the computer room are of little value when the total building is engulfed in flames. In fact, in many cases more damage is done to the sensitive equipment by the water used to put the fire out than by the fire itself.
Storms and tornados carrying high winds and rain often do not directly reach the equipment itself but still destroy it by collapsing the surrounding walls and roof on it. The major cause of storm damage to equipment located inside multi-story and even single-story conventional buildings is the collapse of the housing structure onto the equipment. Something as simple as clogged roof drains have caused building roofs to cave in destroying the equipment in the buildings.
Many computer rooms and critical equipment are located in low areas, such as in basements and ground floors, which are susceptible to flood damage. Clogged sewers, overloaded storm drains and local down pours have also caused extensive damage to critical systems.
Earthquakes occur not only in high risk areas but also in areas normally considered to be safe or immune to earthquakes. The earthquakes collapse structures onto the equipment inside of them. In most of these structures, the only design consideration is to protect the system from the outside environment and not from the structure itself.
Utilities especially in hot climates charge more (often double) for electricity during the peak (air conditioning) utilization hours than off-peak hours, say 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Thermal storage systems to take advantage of the cheaper off-peak electricity are now used. They typically entail digging an ice storage pit, insulating the pit and building an adjacent structure to house the ice making and other equipment. This is a time consuming and expensive construction. Warm water from an existing chilling system is then run (during peak hours) through the ice stored in the pit and the chilled water returns to the chilling system.
Correction facilities are rapidly overcrowding. Temporary facilities, such as mobile homes, have been brought in and used. They are easily and frequently torn up and damaged by the inmates. If there is any combustible material in them, the inmates often set them on fire.